by Cj Howard
He slid his arms around her from behind and leaned over her shoulder, kissing her neck. “That’s so good to hear. You want me to make love to you here and now, don’t you…” He kissed her neck again and moved his mouth up near her ear, whispering to her as his hand rose and cupped her breast and his fingers squeezed it firmly, “that’s what I want too, baby.”
She pushed his hand down away from her and turned to face him. “No, Tristan, that’s not what I want at all.” She saw confusion in his eyes and face. “I came to tell you that you don’t need to come back here. I’m going to stay and I’m not going to divorce Peter. I’m going to finish out my three years with him because I want to be with him, Tristan.”
Tristan blinked in surprise and sighed. “So you really aren’t going to live anywhere else. Alright, we will get a house here. It’s fine. You can move in with me as soon as your three years are up.” He pulled her into his arms and smiled down at her. “We can see each other in secret like we did at the cabin. No one will know, and then at the end of your time with him, you will divorce him and we can finally be married.” He leaned down to kiss her, but she turned away and stepped back out of his arms.
“Tristan, I want to be here in this house with him as his wife. I care about him. I love him.” She said the words as kindly as she could, but she had to speak them to him nonetheless; he just couldn’t grasp what she was saying to him otherwise, because he was so set on having her for himself.
He stared at her in disbelief and the expression on his face transformed from one of arousal to one of shock and denial. “What?” he asked almost in a whisper, his eyes searching her face for some clarification and meaning.
She felt horrible about telling him the truth, but it had to be said. “I love him, Tristan, and I want to be with him, no matter how that has to be. He’s the right man for me and I didn’t know it before, but I have realized that and I know it now. I’m so sorry if you feel like I led you on, and I am sorry if you are hurt, because I never intended for that to happen, but I want you to know how things are and I wanted to be the one to tell you.” She reached for his hands but he took a step back from her and stared at her. “I care about you so much, but I can’t be with you because if I was it would be a lie. I’d be lying to both of us and I just can’t do that.”
Tristan shook his head and then stepped forward and reached for her shoulders. “This can’t be! You and I were just talking about this in the drawing room! You are going to come away with me; you’re going to be my wife! I love you! Do you understand that? I love you!” He seemed to be pleading and arguing. His grip on her tightened and he pulled her to him, but Emmaline lifted his hands from her shoulders and walked away from him, going toward the door.
“I’m so very sorry, Tristan,” she said, turning to look at him and crossing her arms in front of her. “I thought that you were my ideal mate; that you were the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but I can see now that I was wrong. I know you’re hurt and I never wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry I couldn’t see it before, but Peter is right for me, and nothing will change that.”
He looked furious and hurt. “I changed everything for you!” He raised his voice a little and glared at her with tears in his eyes. “I love you! You were going to be mine!”
She shook her head. “I can’t be yours, Tristan. I am married to Peter and that’s how it will stay.” Then she turned and walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.
*
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and calm herself and then she went down the hall and walked into Peter’s office. He turned from the window overlooking the garden and pushed his hands down in his pockets with a sigh. His jacket was hanging on his chair, his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest and his sleeves were rolled up just beneath his elbows. He looked to her as though he was going through a really hard time.
She walked in quietly and sat at one of the chairs before his desk. “Rough day?” she asked, slipping her toe into the water to test the temperature.
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a rough day. I have had a parting of the ways with Tristan. He has other goals in mind that don’t align with mine, so he will be going in another direction on his own. I think he plans on leaving tomorrow. I’m sorry about that; I know you care for him a great deal. I’m entirely responsible for it.”
Emma watched him and waited as he rounded the desk and stood at the corner of it, looking down toward her. “I have a lot of changes to make for the business because of his departure.” He looked at her with a sad and tired expression on his face.
“There are some changes that we need to make to, in light of the changes that he is making.” He continued with a serious sadness about him.
“What are those?” she asked pensively.
He looked down at his shoes and then into her eyes. “I’m going to grant you a divorce so that you can be free to make your own choices about the life that you want to live. You’ve done more for me than anyone else ever has and I want to give you your freedom. I’m having Nelson draw up the paperwork tomorrow, so that all we will have to do is sign it, and then you can go.” He turned away from her and walked to the window, looking out silently onto the garden again.
“I’m going to give you the three million; you have more than earned it. There’s a good chance I’m going to be the next governor of this great state, and I owe every bit of that to you.” He spoke in a soft tone and it touched her heart. “I want you to take the money and your freedom and go be happy, doing whatever you want to do with… with whomever you want to do it with.” The sadness in his voice was profound and made her ache.
Emmaline sat there looking at him and realized that he was making the changes in their agreement so that she could be happy and go with Tristan. It was the most selfless, generous, heartfelt thing that anyone had ever done for her and it made her heart ache and her eyes tear up. She rose up out of the chair and walked toward him, looking at the back of a beautiful swan who had been masquerading as an ugly duckling. It was then that she knew just how deeply she had fallen in love with him in her time with him and she knew without a doubt that her grandfather had been completely right about them. Everything about Peter had changed, right under her nose, and it was all because of her. She felt a deep and strong love that, like a river, sprang up suddenly in her heart and began to run wild for him; like it had been blocked off and the barrier had broken. She was amazed that she had not seen the obvious changes in him, but she was so glad she had discovered them before it was too late. She was so relieved that she had chosen not to be with Tristan.
“Peter, you don’t have to give me the money or the divorce,” she said quietly.
She reached up and touched his back and he looked down at his feet for a long moment and then looked back out the window, away from her. “I do, Emma, I have talked with Tristan, and I know how you both feel about each other. You love him and you want to be with him as his wife, so I do have to give you the divorce, and I want to give you the money. Like I said, you have most certainly earned it. Also, I have to apologize for what happened earlier. I’m so sorry that I kissed you again. I know we ruled out things like that and I had no business pushing myself on you the way I did. Please forgive me for that and know that I am sorry for it.”
Emmaline kept her hand on his shoulder and looked up at the back of his head and spoke with a kind strong voice. “I’m not,” she said.
He was still for a moment and then turned slowly to look at her. “What was that?” he asked in complete astonishment.
She lifted her chin and looked at him. “I am not sorry you kissed me. It was one of the best kisses of my life. I’m so glad you did it, because I love you, Peter, and I hope you kiss me like that again all the time. I’m not going with Tristan when he leaves and if he comes back it will be in vain. I’m your wife, and I want to stay here with you, because I love you.”
Peter could have been knocked over with a feather, he was in so
much shock. “Can this be real?” he wondered out loud. She just grinned at him and took his hands into hers.
“Emma,” he whispered her name and looked down into her face, “I love you, too. I never knew it could feel like this, and I have tried to get you out of my mind and out of my heart, but the more I try, the deeper you get into me. I need you, Emma. I need you like the air that I breathe, but I was ready to let you go to him and leave me, because I thought you needed him. I thought he would make you happy. There is nothing I want more than your happiness.” A tear rolled down his cheek and he wiped it away quickly, but he was never happier than he was at that moment looking at her as she stood there telling him she loved him.
Emmaline lifted her face to his and, laying her hands on his chest, kissed Peter’s mouth for a long moment, and then stepped back to look at him. He stared at her for a long minute in utter surprise and then leaned over and swept her off of her feet and into his strong arms. She laughed joyfully and he turned his face to hers and kissed her in shock and complete happiness, and then he walked out of his office and carried her down the long hall to his bedroom, where he closed the door behind him with his foot and laid her on the bed. She looked up at him with excitement and rapture. She couldn’t believe it was happening, but it was, and her heart flooded beyond overflowing with all the joy in her.
He leaned over her and looked deeply into her eyes. “Are you sure you want me rather than Tristan? I thought you were going to marry him.” He had to ask her, to be sure.
She had never been surer of anything in her life. Emmaline lifted her hands up to his face and pulled it down to hers, pressing her lips to his smile and saying huskily, “I can’t marry him. I’m already married to the man I love.”
Peter laughed lightly in amazement and then moved himself next to her on the huge bed. He gazed at her for a long minute, hardly daring to believe that they were laying there together, and then he leaned over and touched his lips to hers, kissing her deeply, and the fires that he had brought up in her ignited immediately as she realized that he really was going to make love with her then. He touched her face and her neck carefully and gently, tracing her features, caressing her skin and hair, and somehow he managed to hold himself back as he peeled her clothes off of her a piece at a time, as though he was unwrapping a precious and priceless gift. For the very first time in his life, Peter began to experience the wonder of making love rather than just having recreational sex with a meaningless partner or two. It was life changing for him.
As he took the last pieces of material from her body, he stared at her in awe, his hand gently brushing what he had wished for and desired for so long. “I imagined you so many times,” he admitted to her as she smiled at him, “but never in my best dreams did you look this beautiful.” He touched her lips softly with his and ran his hands over her skin as he felt all of her in his reach. “I love you,” he said as he kissed her and then he began to canvass her body with his mouth. He moved from her luscious and full lips down her throat to the generous swells of her breasts, tasting her nipples and sucking gently on them as she raked her fingernails through his sandy blonde hair. His hands squeezed and massaged her breasts, cradling them close to his face until he moved himself down to the valley beneath her belly.
Peter slid his hands over her thighs and moved them apart, running his tongue over the inner areas of her legs and making her gasp with need and delight. He kissed her body and painted his wide hot tongue over the core of her until she called out his name, coming passionately as his hands clung to her hips and legs and his tongue was fervently exploring her inner depths. She had never experienced pleasures such as he was giving to her and before he could enter her, she laid him down and swallowed the thick and solid length of him, sucking on him and teasing him, drawing him to the brink of joy and then relenting enough that he was desperate for more of her and rolled her over onto her back underneath him.
He rose above her and rubbed himself along the outside of her, feeling the moistness of her body as it ached and longed for him, and then he slowly entered her, pushing himself into her inch by inch and making her writhe in his arms with desire until she was filled with him, and they both closed their eyes and soft sighs of pleasured bliss escaped them. He moved with a rhythm of love inside of her and as he pushed himself deeply into her body, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly to her. Together they swayed and rocked and she could not count the times that she clung to him in ecstasy, as orgasm after orgasm shuddered through her time and again. Her hands moved over his light skinned, toned and muscular body, vacillating between sweet caresses and hungered need. She made him clench to her tightly when the feelings were too intense, but he would not let himself reach that pinnacle of love because he wanted to remain in her body for as long as he could, feeling her underneath him, above him, around him, and burying himself in the depths of her fiery heat. His hands and his mouth explored every part of her as the two lovers learned one another and loved each other until he could not hold himself back. Finally, he let go of a powerful release into her body, holding her tightly to him and losing the very last of his old life at the same moment that he was given the gift of a new life, a life with the woman of his dreams, his wife.
He discovered a love and passion that he did not know existed, and he learned that the more he let go of himself in her arms, the more he found himself, and the more he realized that there would never be another woman that could make him want her like Emmaline did. He was almost dumbstruck by her beautiful heart and her breathtaking body, and somehow, no matter how much of her flesh he licked and tasted and touched, he continued to want more of her. It was an insatiable hunger between them both that was never appeased.
Mere minutes after he had collapsed in bliss with her in the bed, he was aroused again and she was stunned. “So soon?”
He grinned at her. “I’ve wanted you for so long, and I just can’t get enough of you. I’m never going to have enough of you.” Before they could say anything else, he was inside of her again, and their white hot flames of desire were blazing in and around them as they held each other and wrestled in their lovers tangle.
Emmaline knew that she had chosen the right man and she marveled at the lesson she had learned about seeing people for who they really are rather than who they might be perceived to be. “We better tell Nelson not to work on the divorce papers, then,” she said with a wide smile, and he laughed and kissed her.
“No. We have to stop the divorce right away.” He pulled her into his arms. “I’m never going to let you go.” He kissed her again and held her close to him.
They finally fell asleep together and slept cuddled in each other’s arms, and when dawn broke, they made love again with happy sighs and blissful joy.
Tristan had already gone when they finally emerged from Peter’s bed the next day, and Emmaline silently wished him well and hoped that he would be alright and find some happiness without her.
He sent her a message many weeks later, telling her that he was heartbroken, but he wanted her to be happy and if Peter was what she wanted, then it was Peter that she would have, and they did not speak again. There was never a time in all the years to come in her life with Peter that she ever regretted the choice she had made or second guessed what might have happened had she gone with Tristan.
Their marriage became more real every day as they learned to live together and thrive as one. They worked on the campaign with eager and determined hearts and hands, and when the election finally came, she was at his side and under his arm when he discovered that he had won the election in a landslide. It was an ironic turn of events when the old governor had to shake Peter’s hand and welcome him to the new office.
It felt to Peter as though he had finally come full circle and he could see, far after the fact, that each of the events that had happened had led up to where he had found himself, and, as Governor for the next few years, he always went on record to say that without Emmaline, he would no
t be nearly the man he was – and he would never change a moment of it.
THE END
Hey beautiful!
I really hope you enjoyed my novel and I would really love if you could give me a rating on the store at the below link!
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CJ x x
ALSO BY CJ HOWARD
THE BILLIONAIRE'S LOVE CHILD
On the surface, Billionaire Kevin has it all. He is rich beyond his wildest dreams and has the perfect trophy wife to go with it.
However, there is one thing he wants more then anything else in the world... A Child.
Only problem is, his wife refuses to give him any children and does not have any plans to do so ever. A divorce would be too messy for a man of his wealth so Kevin has no choice but to take drastic action.
He hires a surrogate with a TWIST.
He will father a baby with her but in this arrangement she will get to keep it. In return, mother and child will be supported financially for the rest of their lives. They will never need or want for anything, just as long as Kevin can fulfill his dream of being a dad.
For the beautiful and curvy Marina this is the ideal arrangement for her. She has always dreamed of being a mother but has never met a man worthy.
Kevin and Marina are about to embark on a very unique arrangement. One that promises to blur the line between love and convenience. Can such an arrangement exist without feelings getting involved? And can Kevin really stand by and watch his love child grow up without being involved directly?
